Decision-making

Is Innovation Dead?

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment

“Innovation” has become a flat buzz-word in business. I think we may have finally beat it into unremitting grayness, which is unfortunate. If ever we have been in need of creative and unusual solutions to problems, it is this moment in which we find ourselves. Even the concept of “disruptive innovation” has become something of a totem that has lost meaning.

I have been in discussions of how some organizations choose to approach this kind of process. Some pat themselves on the back if they can manage to agree on changing the color of the cloth covering the cubicles, and others destroy productivity and morale by nuking the team, process and business plan almost monthly. Certainly, what works for one may not work for another, but taking well-written best practices and lessons learned from an book or article (or motivational speaker…) and then rounding your team into a room and delivering it as this quarter’s way out of a business problem without due research and context probably won’t work.

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Get the Internet to Work for Your Company

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A question I received this week was, “What is the single most important thing to do so the Internet works best for your company?”

Ask this of 5 consultants and you will likely get about 43 different answers.  That said, I put forth my answer with the caveat that the Internet is so insanely dynamic that things can change rapidly and pretty radically.  OK, then….

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Reliability and Finding the Right Expert for Your Business

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment

During a fruitful first meeting with a new colleague and collaborator this week, she mentioned something that really disturbed me.  She has a very healthy graphic design and publishing business and works with a broad array of customers.  She focuses on what she does very well and gives referrals, like any good business, to other businesses that she works with and trusts. However, in a couple of instances she has had to give referrals to customers for solopreneurs she didn’t know as well, particularly in the digital and social media marketing areas.

Sadly, both she and her customers “got bitten.” Although I haven’t gotten the complete story, apparently the solo businesses gladly took the referrals, promised the moon, seriously under-delivered and then disappeared. My colleague looked bad and her customers had a less than wonderful experience, as well as losing money and time.

Wow.  Just Wow….

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Now What?!

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Every business hits this wall at some time.

Whether your just starting out, ALMOST to profitability, have a “going concern” or are well-established, sooner or later something either organic (like growth of your customer base) or externally realized (your top salesperson and top delivery person get married and move out of the state), “Now What?!” happens to you.

How do you respond?

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The Forecast Myth

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I’ve always associated the term “forecast” with the weather. Coming from the Midwest, I am culturally inclined to a near obsession with the weather. Few places have unchangeable weather, and living someplace where a tornado, a blizzard, a scorching heat wave or some other short or long term event can come slamming down on top of you makes you a bit skeptical of anyone’s ability to tell the future.  Granted, in the area of meteorology, science is improving, but sometimes it pays to just step outside for minute and look at the sky.

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Just Don’t Call It Change

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I attended a very interesting forum yesterday. The topic was what they termed the “triple bottom line” of sustainability: Environmental, Economic and Social. The members of the panel were from varied industries and sizes of companies and all had unique stories and perspectives on how they have approached sustainability in a way that truly benefits everyone. It was thought-provoking and I intend to write some more about it in a different post.

However, a comment that one of the panelists made leapt out at me. In telling how some of the changes that the company had made and continues to make to enhance their sustainability, they had found that couching the efforts as improvement instead of change had a significant impact on the feelings that other team members had about the efforts and their buy-in.

As she said at the time, “No one wants to change, but who doesn’t want to improve?“

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Disruption, recovery and space

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment

While completing my Masters degree I was vicariously introduced to Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School and his many works (a sample) concerning disruptive innovation.   Greatly interesting stuff and

Disruption

Disruption (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

required reading for anyone in business or those who are creative and wish to understand the business world’s take on how this is perceived and understood, as well as the potential effects thereof.

That said, disruption and innovation as buzzwords have become less exciting through overuse and misunderstanding by some technologists and businesses, particularly as they apply to their organizations.  While, as Bill Gates has said, today’s business goes “at the speed of thought”, and agility is critical, there seems to be a lack of understanding concerning the fragility of organizations consisting of people executing on previous editions of goals, commitments, hierarchies and business models.  There are degrees of change that can be accomplished that help alter the direction of a business, a ‘mid-course correction’ on company strategy, if you will.  There are also methods and timings of rolling out these changes, or more radical degrees or types of change that will break an organization.
When considering disruptive change within a company, several areas should be considered. Along side the change, whether to strategy, execution or model, leadership should realistically assess:
(A) How long has it been since the last disruptive change to the organization?
(B) How long it will take to affect the change completely?
(C) How long will the ‘after change stabilization’ take?
(D) How much lost productivity can the organization withstand while the stabilization takes place and the company can begin executing effectively on the new direction?
(E) How clearly do the members of the organization understand the reasoning driving the disruption and can they clearly see the value of the strategy?
(F) What is the degree of ambiguity this will create for all interested parties – customers, partners, shareholders, communities…..everyone….and what is required to manage it through the disruption?

Comfortable with Ambiguity?

/ Jeff Hora / 3 Comments
English: Diagram of Schrodinger's cat theory. ...

English: Diagram of Schrodinger’s cat theory. Roughly based on Image:Schroedingerscat3.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Acceptance of ambiguity is a by-word in corporate America today, if job descriptions are any indication. Not just acceptance but whole-hearted embrace seems to be the price of admission.  I find this call interesting, if only because of its own ambiguous nature.

A bit of research into the history of the word yields the Latin ambiguus, meaning “moving from side to side” or “of doubtful nature”. Yet, while demanding a comfort level with uncertainty, we are also asked to drive clarity, provide forecasts, deliver cohesive plans, and prove ROI on all the above.  No small task if the very nature of life, let alone business, is unstable.

It occurred to me that there is a dual view to take in considering ambiguity. One is by science and the other by faith.

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Fail and Win

/ Jeff Hora / 3 Comments
Wattenberg chess visualization 050421

Image via Wikipedia

I have been thinking about a post by Tac Anderson on his NewCommBiz blog about making mistakes, crisis-based decision making and how we learn.  It specifically got me thinking about organizations that learn and those that don’t really, or at least not very well (or easily).

Things move terribly fast in today’s marketplace and the halls of business. We blame it on the Internet, on the 24-hour news cycle, on our growing propensity for being “always on and connected” and on “everyone else.”  There have been countless barrels of ink spilled on the importance of failure for learning, both as individuals and organizations.  Even just thinking about how you learn personally will confront you with the first attempt at doing something, assessing how well that went, tweaking, trying again, etc.

So why do we not get it?  I’m not saying we drive for failure (although that seems to be the direction of some I’ve noticed….), but, short of life-and-death, why do we not accept that failing is at least as important as not failing?

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On noise and filters

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment

I’ve begun teaching my fall class in social media in business and have led the group in a collective moan about the sheer volume of data and information available, some of it valuable, but much of it ancillary at best and junk/noise at the far end of personal/professional value.  It’s pretty easy to sell a good set of filters to allow the really good stuff onto our desktops and ignore the rest.

But at what cost?

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